The Color of the Wild

“The Color of the Wild” was a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of the city I live in. A nature lover like Getz, it is nice to revisit nature through the photos, poetry, and personal stories that she shares. Getz is a nomad (in the most positive sense of the word) at heart, having grown up most of her life without firm roots to ground her. She has experienced city life, mountain, country, and the coasts. In the end, she was only able to ground herself within the mountain.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. Getz is a strong woman (both inside and out) who has learned much from nature. Sadly, nature takes from her as much as it gives. Raising animals in the mountains is hard work and family problems don’t make things easy either. In the wide open terrain, family feuds can suffocate anyone.

I am glad to have received this book through Goodreads First Reads. I recommend it for any nature lover out there. It is a great breath of fresh air in the hustle of every day.

This book is beautifully written. From the first page, you’ll be drawn into Gin’s world and invested in her journey. Gin lives a life so different from my own, and yet…I feel an understanding and kinship with her as I follow her story and experience her adventures.

The story is told through Gin’s words, poetry, and stunning photos of the land she calls home. I think we often assume that living a “peaceful” mountain life is idyllic, but Gin convinces me that mountain life – and for that matter, life in the wild anywhere – is more blood, sweat, and tears than sitting around enjoying the view.

I love her perspective and honesty about everything she shares, including the deep bonds she has with her family and animals.

Getz’ writes about a year in the high Rockies and her profound connection to and love of nature. I read awestruck of her courage in facing the storms of life–natural and personal. Her raw strength inspired and frightened me, as I knew I could not have withstood what she embraced.

Getz is a strong writer, a lyrical writer; and, I strongly recommend her book

THE COLOR OF THE WILD is an extraordinary book and Gin Getz’s writing will definitely hold you captive. It was a joy to read this book. I was transported into her world, one of silence, one of glorious white, one of hardships, one of love, one of life. I was transported into her heart and soul.

I love the photo above of the author. Her face holds the secrets of her life. She makes no excuses for who she is or the road she has either chosen or perhaps the one that has chosen her. There’s a story along each laugh line, and each wrinkle has a tale to tell. It is the story of a very independent and strong woman who has, at times, struggled to find her place in the world. She writes with honesty and heart-felt emotion as she tells her story.

In THE COLOR OF THE WILD, the author used not only words, but beautiful photos and poetry to tell the reader about herself and the mountain on which she lives. I could find no fault with the book. I was transported into her life each time I picked the book up and opened it. It was a world I wanted to spend a lot of time in, a world where winter comes and stays for six months at a time. A world of white where every time you walk outside, you blaze a trail. A world where the air is fresh and clean and means only the survival of the fittest or the crazy. I am giving the book five stars, but truly, it deserves so much more.

The Color of The Wild is a fascinating read about a woman who escapes from Manhattan to live a hard life, 10,000 feet higher in the remote Rocky Mountains where she and her family of three are snowbound much of the year. It is a hard life up there, and it is described by a “hard” woman, though much softness also shines through especially as concerns her love for her animals and for the wildness of her chosen lands.

The reader is invited to ride along with her as she handles a tough childhood and then segues into adventures such as her time on a Grecian beach, her handling of a brutal would be rapist, etc – all told with no punches withheld in an engaging manner, so that we get to know and appreciate this woman.

And we get to really know her as she rises to the challenges of living in the cold and daunting mountains, which also cuddle her spirit and the things she loves.

This is a great read for anyone wanting to explore the evolution of spirit, the lovely harshness of life in deep Nature, the love of family that comes out vividly, and the strength and depth of this woman.

This is a book I’ve already read twice, and I keep going back to it. Gin’s writing is so honest and real. I recommend this book if you love poetry, memoir, horses, the outdoors, and strong women who love their families.

If you like good writing, photography, and poetry, Gin Getz provides them all expertly woven into a compelling story. You will feel as though you are standing in her corral beholding her beloved mountains and river, and feel her devastation at losing one of her animals. But this is more than a description of the land, it is an homage to it. With her husband and son, they endure, yet love, the isolation of long winters and extreme temperatures. These are tough people, and they persevere against difficult odds. Whether you are an armchair adventurer or someone who wonders if you could survive high in the Colorado mountains, this book is well worth a read.

I recently read this amazing book and I am not a reader by any means but couldn’t put it down! Gin brought out more emotions during my reading than any book has in a long time. A lot of books give you a picture as you read but her book puts you in the picture with her. Her love of the beauty of the mountains and surroundings can’t but help you live it with her but she doesn’t sugar coat the brutality of the conditions she has endured, either, or the mixed emotions of living in such an environment. If you love nature, the mountains, and the majestic beauty of our world, this is a book you have to read. Amazing writer that drew me in from start to finish!! LOVED THE BOOK!!

I chose to read this book because I have read many articles by this writer. They are always beautifully written. She makes you go where she is. You can feel every word that she writes. This book is about her very interesting way of life. Anyone will enjoy her story. Please write more Ms Gin Getz!

Gin hits a Colorado Rocky Mountain home run with The Color of the Wild. 200 or so pages was not enough, as I wish for 2000 pages. As a frequent flyer to The Lost Trail Ranch, I can attest to Gin’s descriptive writings. Gin does a superb job of allowing the reader to experience the senses of touch, smell, sounds, vision and even pain. I like the way she touched into her life and times in the big city but could dive right back into Lost Trail. The reading flows easily and is descriptive to make you feel you are right there on the ranch or on Pole Creek Mountain. Congrats Gin!

The Color of Wild is a gorgeous synthesis of senses — part poem, part memoir, part homage to the rugged country Gin Getz calls home. With disarming honesty, Getz recounts through words and images the emotional journey that led her to this remote and unyielding land. Yet it is in this place of near isolation that Getz is most connected to her family, herself, and the larger world. A beautiful and captivating work of art.

Gin’s writing evokes a bygone era of the pioneer spirit. The imagery was vivid and brought to life the Rocky Mountain wilderness that I have been privileged to experience several times in my life. Gin’s writing clearly embodies the realism of a life of solitude and the hope for a harmonized world in which we live. I am inspired.

Reading Gin Getz’ book, I was transported into a world I will never know first hand.
A wilderness described with tenderness, but harsh reality.
A year of so many joys and sorrows, of successes and failures.
And yet, Gin Getz describes them honestly and lyrically, with a talent that makes one want to read on and on.
And in between the lines you read of love, appreciation, and commitment to a family and a home, which would be hard to duplicate.

I am overcome. Vibrant Life. Heart rending Grief. Poetry and images that capture both, without a single wasted word. Who knew a beautiful life is a vibrant tapestry of loss, pain, and suffering transformed by tears, time, and love? Gin tenderly, yet with firmness, captures and gives voice to the events that shaped her journey while sharing the life, death, and rebirth of the high mountain valley in which she lives.

The Color of the Wild provides readers a glimpse and feel of what living on a ranch in the wilderness, far away and cut off from neighbors, is like. It is rough and challenging. But the healing, peace, and solitude within is met with unexpected seasonal rewards; such as the songs of frogs in a mountain pond.

As a boy and young man I grew up in the San Luis Valley, in the long shadows of the San Juan mountains where Gin works, lives, and loves. The sun went to bed there. Water, white gold to farmers there and elsewhere along the Rio Grande, came from the mountains. Violent summer hail storms brought random ruin. The constant green coupled with an ever changing palette of red, yellow and gold marked the passing seasons.

Gin Getz has created a multilayered artwork as timeless as the mighty Rio Grande that flows from the Great Divide. Like the river giving life on its journey, Gin’s work gives a voice to mountains that cannot speak for themselves as she shares the wounds, healing, and love of her journey. A must read for anyone that needs to step away from the busyness of life into the healing solitude of the wilderness.

Through her remarkable gift of words the author opens her heart and soul taking the reader places few even dare to dream, while inspiring us to look deep inside ourselves, beyond the superficial, to conquer our demons, pursue our dreams and live life fully and without regrets.

…”I fear I am missing my soul, that I am cold at hear, while the blood of my bleeding sisters pours warm rich and red. At such times I see the selfishness in my choice to be here…….” Gin opens her world of the isolated Rio Grande Valley, her family, animals and personal history in a wonderfully rich memoir that tugged at my heart, fears and dreams. Her poetry, photos and prose displayed the contrasts that have marked her life, being resilient and unyielding to the challenges that life holds and graceful enough to bare her soul in a book that will delight any reader who has experienced the ups ands downs in life. I could relate so well to this book and I appreciate being able to share her story.

My home is thousands of miles away from where Gin comes from, across the world in Europe. Yet, when I started reading Gin’s book, I felt like as if I were sitting on that back seat of Bob’s truck, next to her, Forrest and Gunmar along for the ride. I was in my armchair back home, but I was there with Gin too, throughout her story.

And now that I have finished reading it, I feel like turning the page and reading about a new January.
Slowly, subtly, as you read, you feel Gin growing in you, on you. As she tells her tale, her life, her truth, the ins, the outs, you feel you are her, you feel for her. Without blemishes she would appear mundane. It is the scars of life she bears that you feel through your skin as your eyes follow her words.

In many places throughout this book, I feel like one of Forrest’s free range hens, peeping through the fence to observe the life the family lead, like an impostor on a tableau in the making.

At the beginning of their acquaintance Bob gives Gin a roughly drawn map on a napkin to help her find her way through an unknown mountain track on horseback with the guests she is leading: I think Bob has something of the sage in him; had he given Gin a detailed map, chances are (he knew) she’d get more lost than leaving her to use her imagination, intuition, sense of being and allowing her to find her own way, and find herself along the way. Bob’s soothing presence is felt throughout.

You can paint a picture depicting the transformation from one season to another, or you can put it in words, the way Gin does. Words which allow you to imagine you are there and that you have lived through, or at least had a glance preview, into the world Gin is immersed in. Her pen breezes across the paper in the way a paintbrush might, revealing in one long sweeping stroke the move from one season to the next on her mountain:

“The greening of the mountain comes in a mild progression, rising in elevation like fog, slowly snaking higher and higher, day by day, winding up the dirt road toward us, transforming the mountain along the way with hints of new life in the stubble of pasture left from last year, in budding trees, in the first sounds of the summer people. Motors and unknown voices and barking dogs slowly replace the song of the frogs, the rumble of rocks letting loose from thawing walls of the surrounding cliffs, the chatter of a thousand birds and the roar of open waters. Thus is the transition.”

Aldous Huxley, the English writer,’s aphorism “Experience is not what happens to you , it is what you do with what happens to you” comes to mind when I think of Gin. Some people would have packed their bags long ago and returned to the well trodden path. Not Gin.

“We made it the adventure we wanted it to be. It was fun. No, that may not be the word of choice when it’s the middle of the night and nature calls, though it’s twenty-five below out there and the outhouse seems so far away. Yet you return to a warm bed and snuggle down under the blankets and are surrounded by loving arms and the steady breath of gentle sleep. And you feel very, very lucky.”

Gin’s beautiful photographs which appear at the beginning of each chapter are an artwork in themselves and an additional labour of love in her story.

Congratulations Gin and I look forward to the continuation of your tale!

Gin Getz chronicles her current life in the wilderness of the Colorado mountains, thriving without the modern conveniences that most of us take for granted. She provides us a window, through her words and luxurious photos, into a world that no one else ever sees because the area is so remote and inhospitable much of the year. Along the way, she discusses her feelings about coping with the harsh conditions, family squabbles, and making a living. Life lessons abound, and you are motivated to examine your own life.

Only Gin Getz could have written this beautiful, heartwrenching, yet uplifting book. With her “outsider’s” eye, she brings her art training, her sophistication (she studied at NYU, designed clothes for Bloomie’s and has lived in France, rural Argentina, Greece, and Manhattan…), and her open heart to the wilds of the Colorado mountains. Her poetry is poignant, her photography gorgeous, her writing moving and eloquent.

Why would she choose this heartbreaking, backbreaking, spirit-challenging life? With deep introspection and unfettered honesty, Gin describes herself, her horses, her life, her family, and her world. She challenges her readers to delve deep within, to the very core of their being, to ask themselves who they truly are, why they live the life they do, what they would really rather be and do. Stripped to the essentials, what really matters most? This self-knowledge is rare, painful to acquire, yet essential for our maturity in wisdom. Having conquered her dragons, Gin is open to the beauty and marvel of her mountainous world. Gin Getz in this book provides us a rare glimpse into what—maybe—we could all be.

This book is an honest, interesting and sometimes raw account of a person who
exemplifies the phrase, the “glass half full”. Throughout the book the author speaks
of numerous trials that would be difficult for most people to withstand but she manages to get through these trials with determination as she moves forward to meet new challenges. The poetry and photography help to create images in ones mind that depict the obvious beauty and solitude of the different places she has visited. The author knows not only how to survive under some very difficult situations but also shows a zest for life as she does so.

An eloquently written tale told by a woman who never stops listening to her heart. I immediately embraced her courage, honor and hope for her life and her son. Her heartache on asking too much of her animals to live and thrive in such a harsh place were so easily felt through her words.

Her poems intertwined with stories were perfectly placed. Offering me, the reader, just the right amount of artistry as well as story. I truly think she is an artist with her words, painting such a realistic view of a moment. What an opportunity to step into her world over and over again through these carefully chosen, felt, lived words.

I read the book almost cover to cover, soaking in the feeling of the winter months, breathing deeply through the spring, savoring the last of summer. As the book turned towards fall and then winter, I found myself anticipating its arrival, the end. I was sad to leave her words and yet so grateful to have had the experience.

This book chronicles a year in the life at an off the grid guest ranch high in the Rockies, next to the Weminuche Wilderness. It’s a story about getting ready to leave this place – mentally and physically. In the first chapter author, Gin Getz looks back at that year and says that ‘she is still here’. She then goes on to introduce the readers to her family and herself and their animals and the place they call home. From January through December she describes the life they live and also the past the brought her to this place – in prose and poetry. Then again, there is a deeper story and that is the innate connection she has to this place and it to her. She describes the land as a mother, a lover, a place to lose herself and then to find herself.

Getz describes in articulate detail the intimate relationship she has with her son and husband and her animals. The reader gets to know the bond between wife and husband, mother and child and how they draw strength from each other. The pain that she suffers with the death of a young horse is gripping and heart breaking. There is also the pain inflicted by hurtful in-laws. She shares with the reader the good times too – time spent snowshoeing in the silent winter on the flanks of her beloved mountain; walking along the river; time with her horses, traveling to the high country; time with her husband and son in quiet contemplation and hard at work as an experienced and coordinated team. She is a woman comfortable with herself – able to care for the ranch alone when the others have taken snow machines over the mountain to enjoy a night in a more ‘civilized’ place. She is able to be alone without being lonely. She is also a survivor – having lived through many experiences that might have left someone else defeated and ready to give in to someone else’s pressures. Through it all she manages to maintain a deep connection to the land and her dogs and horses and family.

This is a story full of passion and adventure, quiet times and high lonely mountains, hard work and peaceful evenings next to a warm fire. Gin Getz has created a story with enough history to allow the reader to see glimpses of Getz’s motivations and raw emotions that have led her to this place where she is at home. She does this with well-crafted prose and poetry that flows like a mountain stream and also with her stunning black and white photos of the place and her family and her animals. I highly recommend this book.

I could not put this book down! Gin Getz takes us on an adventure of a life time. I felt I was there with her during every moment of her journey. Feeling like I too was in the journey that this strong, independent woman was taking. I could see through her eyes. Wow. This book took me on an adventure that I will never take. But I did. This is a must read.

In this beautifully written book, Gin Getz manages to make you feel as if you walk alongside her as she faces the trails and joys of life in her snow covered world. If you’re looking for something wonderful to read next to a roaring fire….this is it!

This is the most beautiful, honest story of a strong, independent woman, who like so many of us has struggled to find her place. Filled with vibrant imagery, raw emotion and sprinkled liberally with heartfelt poetry expect to be immersed in a landscape that is like no other, that can only be described by someone who has truly lived with eyes wide open. Definitely worth savoring!